


E.N.T.R.A.P.T.A.

by Shadsie



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Dead!Entrapta, Drama, Eventual humor I hope, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Ghost!Entrapta, Ghosts, Haunted Technology, Horror, Mostly Gen, One-Sided Shipping, Science Fiction, Tragedy, canon-divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-21 08:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: Canon-Divergence, Season 1.  A "For Want of a Nail" story.Entrapta does not survive the flame-purge.  However, it doesn't mean that she isn't still around.  Surprised to find her consciousness intact and able to manifest around fields of electricity and magic, she remains a part of Etheria as a virtual spirit, able to possess technology.Let's join her as she rides the lightning.





	1. Ctrl + Alt + Delete

**E.N.T.R.A.P.T.A**  
  
  
**Chapter 1: Ctrl + Alt + Delete**  
  
  
Nothing hurt anymore.  Just moments or maybe hours ago (time seemed relative), she was certain that she had been in intense pain, although she couldn’t remember quite what it had felt like – only that it had been awful and that it was over now.  Everything was dark and cooling smoke filled the room.  Where was she again?   
  
Broken bits of metal caught her eye, melted along the edges.  
  
“Emily?”   
  
Entrapta pawed among the broken legs and casing-parts of the robot only to find something distinctly off.  She looked down to where her right hand should have been, but found nothing.  She moved a tendril of hair and likewise found nothing.  She felt the intuitive sensation of movement, but it was somehow without weight and she didn’t see anything corresponding to the correct parts of her body.   
  
“Emily?”   
  
She tried to pick up and piece parts of Emily’s upper and lower casing back together and found them remaining still, as if she hadn’t touched them at all.   
  
The same thing happened to a multitool that she tried to pick up from a pile of ashes.  Entrapta’s gaze traveled over the pile to find shriveled squiggles that appeared purple in what light there was in among the black and gray and molten synthetic materials, covered in singed gobbets.  There were uneven patches of black and red glistening in the dim light beneath what looked like burnt fabric. A welding-mask was affixed over a vaguely humanoid-shape, its red lenses soot-covered, but mostly untouched, like the scattered tools and parts thereof upon the floor.  There was a screwdriver-bit in a puddle of a half-melted handle.   
  
Entrapta couldn’t find her recording device.  She was sure that she had dropped it. If only she could move this big lump of whatever-it-was, maybe she could find it.     
  
That was the moment she remembered something.  The other Princesses – and Bow and Sea Hawk…they were right there, weren’t they?  Oh, yes, they were escaping the Fright Zone together, running through one of the skiff-ports.  Where was she?  She’d turned back to try to get Emily…then…then…  Had she got stuck in the port?  What happened?   
  
“I sort of blacked out for a second there, didn’t I?” she said to herself. She called out “Hey! Everyone!  I’m okay!  I’ll see if I can get this door open!”   
  
She rose and turned to a keypad that was mounted at the side of the room.  “Hmmm… none of the keys are depressing at my touch.  Fascinating.  Also, awful.  I don’t want to be stuck in here!”   
  
Entrapta felt a rising sense of panic.  “Why can’t I?”  She began.  She went to the sealed doorway and started pounding on it, but not only did no sound come from what should have been a cacophonous percussion of her fists on the door – she could not get a visual on her fists.  There was just enough light in the room that she should have seen something.   
  
She heard voices from the interior and given that they were unfamiliar voices, she flattened herself against the wall.  She found herself melding into it.   
  
“Wait? What?”   
  
A tingling sensation.  Why did she feel one with the wiring in the walls?   
  
“I’m asleep, aren’t I, Emily?” she said.  She’d had dreams like this before – becoming one with code and wiring.  It had been a while since she’d dreamed about being a robot, but it was common to dream lines of code in front of her face when she’d been reading too much of it.  Sometimes, she’d woken up twitchy, trying to remind herself that “2” did not exist in binary.  She did not know why she’d found that disturbing.   
  
One of the approaching voices was an inhuman roar.  The other was small and tentative.  They became closer, along with footsteps.   
  
“Well, I don’t know what got caught in the port, either, but apparently it’s something big enough for shovels, so it’s gotta be bigger than the usual wildlife, even one of the big critters” the smaller voice complained.  “I _hate_ cleaning out the ports!  They’re dark, it’s always _something_ horrible and I’m always worried that the flame-purge is gonna glitch up and come on when we’re in there!”  
  
Another roar.   
  
“Fine for you! You’ve got those thick scales! I don’t!”  
  
“Grrar…rrrh..rrrh.”   
  
“It’s nice that you’ll protect me, but… why does Shadow Weaver always send us to do this stuff?  It’s not like cadets are the only maintenance crew.”   
  
The footsteps stopped as a doorway slid open and two figures stepped inside.  Entrapta watched them – or more like she sensed them – from…wherever she was.  Inside the walls?  Yeah, she was inside the walls.   
  
Funny, she didn’t remember unscrewing a panel. Her optical field seemed to be connected into some sort of camera or monitor.  She had a range of vision that encompassed most of the interior of this port, for what she could see of it in the darkness.  
  
The figures were a large lizard-man and a scrawny blond boy.   
  
“Egads!” the boy exclaimed as he practically jumped onto the large reptilian.  “Oh, geeze! Oh…oh, Hordak….oh!”   
  
The lizard turned and looked at him impassively.   
  
“We…we gotta go get Catra or something!  I didn’t expect a… a PERSON!”   
  
The lizard grunted and nodded.  Entrapta watched as the two took off in a dead-run.   
  
_Huh?_ She thought, _What? Is that what that lump of ashes and char is?  How…_  
  
Her gaze turned to a short shock of end-singed purple hair hanging listlessly over… the welding mask, turned to one side.    
  
“No…this can’t be right.”  
  
Entrapta thought back to that vague knowledge of intense pain.  It came back to her – Emily was stuck.  The door slid behind her.  The last thing she saw was the terrified faces of her friends.   
  
“This can’t be right,” she said, although no one heard.  “How am I still thinking?  I am functioning. Well, sort of.  It is possible that I am malfunctioning.  Paranormal phenomenon or hallucinatory experience? This deserves a log-entry. I wish I had my recorder.”   
  
She realized that her visual vantage point was a sensor on the wall – used to scan incoming and outgoing cargo and to assess obstructions.  She didn’t quite understand it, but she could feel electrical impulses all around her and an electrical field.  She “felt” and then “caught” a command within the room’s security system and suddenly, the outside port-doors slid open, letting in pale daylight from the Fright Zone’s perpetually smog-filled sky.   
  
Yep, there was Emily laying broken, scattered and partially melted there.  There was also a pretty un-mistakable charred corpse.  Like most things subjected to a short, sudden burst of un-sustained flame, the burning was uneven.  Much of the hair was ashes, but a pair of large patches remained close to the head and concealed the facial-area. _An instinctual protective measure?_   Somehow, the scalp had not caught fire. Normally, hair was among the most flammable parts of the human body, but if it had been shielded… or had some magic within it granting it an unusual resistance as Entrapta’s had whenever some of her “will” had been in her hair…    
  
Entrapta paused for a moment in her grim observations before turning her gaze to the subject again.   She’d worn a bob-style haircut at some point in her youth – something her parents has subjected her to - before she and they had discovered how useful her hair was.  After discovering her powers, she let it grow perpetually, as, even without pain, cutting it would have felt like being left bereft a pair of limbs.   
  
The legs and torso had taken the most damage. The feet were gone with only molten shoe-remains and their steel tips remaining.  A half-melted glove stretched over a cracked, charred hand clenched out in a claw.   
  
More footsteps – the large set and the small from before, another large set and a set that had a soft quality to it, like the paws of a stealthy animal.   
  
“Couldn’t you two have handled this, Kyle?” complained the feline-person, it’s just a standard port….oh…  
  
“I think it might be one of the Princesses?”  
  
“You think, Scorpia?”   
  
“Ghrrrr.”   
  
“Less of them to fight, right?”   
  
“This is awful.”   
  
The lizard-man, a woman with a scorpion tail and claws, the scrawny blond and the cat-woman looked at each other.   
  
“I don’t recognize them… Catra?”   
  
“I think I’m gonna be sick!”   
  
“Well, don’t get sick on my shoes, Kyle!”   
  
Catra sniffed and crouched down, picking her feet carefully around the scattered robot parts.   
  
“I don’t know how one of our automated mini-tanks got in here,” Kyle said.  “Maybe it was chasing her down?”   
  
“Well,” Scorpia sighed, “It looks like one of the poor Princesses got trapped down here like one of the giant rats Shadow Weaver likes making you cadets scoop out. Poor thing.”   
  
“Poor things?” Catra hissed.  “They’re Princesses.”    
  
She did not let on that she had, in fact, let Adora and one of her friends go last night – of her own accord - out of some kind of honor, some sense of “only I can defeat you” or just to spite Shadow Weaver… It was all of the above.     
  
She crouched down low over the remains, unaware of the watcher in the walls riding the impulses of the computer system.  She was certain she’d recognized the few unburned shocks of purple hair, but she couldn’t be sure – quite a few Etherian princesses sported that color.  She lifted the mask with a flick of her claw to be greeted by a heat-blushed, but otherwise untouched face caught in a look of surprise.  There were blisters up the neck and the eyes were glassy.   
  
“Surprised there isn’t more damage.  Damn,” Catra cursed.  “I actually found this one bearable.”   
  
“You knew her?” Scorpia tentatively inquired.   
  
“Entrapta of Dryl. I talked with her a bit at the Princess Prom,” Catra said standing up.  “She was cool.  Wasn’t dressed up… was just kind of spying on everyone… seemed more interested in the food than anything.”  She shrugged.  “I guess when you run around with Adora, this is what you get.”  Catra tapped her chin with a claw.  “I wonder if Adora even knows about this.  She might think that one of her little friends is just missing.  Isn’t this a surprise?”     
  
“You’re cruel, Catra,” Kyle complained.   
  
“Well, what else do you expect to happen with Princesses?” Catra said, crouching down again and flipping the mask back down.  “This is a war.  Seems like this was some kind of weird accident, anyway.”   
  
“Should we make a report?” Scorpia asked.   
  
“What do you think?” Catra shot back. “Of course we do.  Careful with the cleanup.  I think Hordak will want to find a way of shipping what’s left of her to Bright Moon as an example to bring down morale.”   
  
“So… we just leave her here, for now then?”  Kyle asked.   
  
“Might as well… until Hordak hands down orders.  Seal off this port.  And let’s get out of here.  The smell of burnt hair is making me want to sneeze.”      
  
Green letters appeared upon the security-system’s monitor that the exiting Horde troops would never see, spelling out a single word:   
  
“Fascinating.” 


	2. Afterimage

**E.N.T.R.A.P.T.A.**

**Chapter 2:  Afterimage**  
  
  
Bow was packing.  A second set of his signature light-armor – check.  A quiver of arrows, both standard and trick-type – check.  Tracker-pad – check. Rations – check.  He did not know how long he would be gone and, considering his destination, even if he would get back.   
  
It had been weeks since Adora left and he’d already searched for her, getting himself lost in the shifting landscape that was the Whispering Woods in search of the Citadel.  At this point, he could only hope that Adora knew what she was doing.  As it was, Glimmer’s sickness was getting worse.  She was currently in the care of her mother and they were trying to find a way to cure it.   
  
Bow made a decision to slip off to the Fright Zone. Whatever had happened to Glimmer lay in the magic of the Black Garnet from what she’d told him.  If he could slip in and study it, somehow – or capture a sample of its magic, it might help her.  He didn’t think that he was skilled enough to reverse-engineer black magic, but maybe Queen Angella would know what to do, or someone with magical-medical knowledge in the Etherian Makers’ Community could take a crack at it.     
  
He had known one all-around genius who could have had a decent shot at it, but nothing was left of her now but ashes.   
  
Bow questioned the wisdom of going alone, but at this point, it was his only option.  The Princess Alliance was done.  Glimmer needed help and the kind that came from a hunter-sneaker, not an army.  He opened his toolbox to assess what was small, most necessary and what he could carry with him.   
  
“Oh,” he said to himself, pausing with a sudden pang to the soul.  He carefully lifted a thin braided lock of purple hair out of the box.  He sighed deeply.  He might as well carry it with him – for luck, or just as a reminder that he couldn’t let another friend down.  He remembered the day he’d acquired it.

  
  
___________________________________________

 

 

Entrapta was perched atop the edge of a wall busily tinkering on a motion-sensor for a surveillance system she was setting up for Castle Bright Moon.  Bow climbed the scaffolding and handed her various requested tools that she picked up with her hair.   
  
“I hope it’s not rude to ask you this,” he began, “but how does your hair work?”   
  
“Hmm?” she muttered.   
  
“You said something about not in synch with a Runestone.  I mean, Glimmer’s powers are tied to the Moonstone, Perfuma has the Heart Blossom, Mermista has the Pearl and She-Ra, well, she has her sword, but I wonder what would make living hair.”   
  
“Oh!” Entrapta replied, turning around to face him, perching precariously on the edge of the wall as if she were an excited little hawk, “I’ve been doing self-experimentation for years! Near as I can tell, I might be the end-result of ancient genetic tinkering by the First Ones! Or maybe it’s a kind of magically-aided telekinesis! It’s not like I have a solid theory yet, just a lot of hypotheses!  It really does seem to be a kind of - radiant consciousness?  If you’d like to help me study it, it would be super-helpful!  I’d love to get other minds on this conundrum!”  
  
Before Bow could say a word, Entrapta had used her hair-tendrils to braid a lock from its own mass and had pulled a pair of scissors from a pocket with another tendril to clip it.  Tentacles of hair gently dropped the neatly-tied braid into a surprised Bow’s hands.   
  
“Here’s a sample,” she said.   
  
Bow held it out and nearly dropped it.  The disembodied lock writhed of its own accord.   
  
“It should stop that after a while,” Entrapta assured him.

  
  
___________________________________

 

The lock of hair was completely limp now.  He rubbed the bumps of the braid between his thumb and forefinger.  He’d never gotten around to doing any kind of intense study on it.  Perhaps it would honor Entrapta to tease it apart and to try to do chemical analysis or some other thing, but Bow didn’t have the heart to.   
  
“I miss you,” he said to the air around him, hoping that in some way, maybe some aspect of his lost friend was “out there” and could hear him.  “We all do.”   
  
Bow carefully wrapped the braid in a soft cloth and placed it in one of his pockets.      
  
____________________________________

 

She leapt from impulse to impulse. All around the Fright Zone, Entrapta’s spirit was taking an electronic tour.  She jumped from code-line to code-line like a flying-squirrel leaping through the trees of Plumeria.  She noted the outdated systems in their lighting, as she had before, when she was paling around with Perfuma on their mission to save Bow and Glimmer.  There were surprisingly advanced defense systems in terms of guns and fencing, however.  She’d switch the electric barrier-fences around some of the weapons-yards and barracks on and off at random, as well as the gun-turrets.  The etherium crystal cores were set up with a similar construct as her own robots.  She noted the similarities and differences and created her own databank of this information in an unused personal computer in a forgotten office – presumably it had been the machine of some former Horde officer who’d been killed or exiled, or was working elsewhere on the planet.  Entrapta encrypted her files with specialized locks – the kind that she was honestly sure she could not have accomplished had she not been able to directly interact with system on the level she was achieving now.   
  
It turns out that there had been some limits to having a meat-body.  She did, however, miss home and was making plans to see if she could hijack one of the Horde mini-tanks – one of the late Emily’s models – and make it home to Dryl.  She’d have to cross some dangerous terrain, but if she got back in the form she was in now, she had a chance to be humanoid again if she could take over one of her own home-built units.  She wondered if her bots missed her – and if her staff did.  She wondered about the Princess Alliance, too.  She wasn’t aware of them trying to rescue her and they hadn’t come back to retrieve her remains. Had they really just left her behind – just like that?  It wasn’t a feeling that she was unused to (she had a hard time keeping staff and even more difficult time making friends), but it always hurt.  She consoled herself with the thought that they’d run into some kind of insurmountable trouble – and, perhaps, were even trying to make it back for her.   
  
The data stored within the Horde computers intrigued Entrapta the most.  She watched training-videos and read pages upon pages of Horde propaganda.  “We’re not like this,” she said of the data on the Princesses that was presented to the children of the Horde.  She noted some data upon Dryl painting it as a gloomy country filled with automatons that enslaved the human and beast-folk populace, with its Princess listed as “a madwoman.”   
  
“Well, that’s not right.  Not all of it, anyway. Um… I don’t think?” she said to herself, at least insomuch as she could speak without lips or vocal cords.  Her speech was more thought right now, with no divide between what flashed through her mind and what she thought of as a speaking “will.’  The scientist sought to explore this consciousness thoroughly.  Entrapta assessed what it felt like – floating, jumping, leaping and sometimes, just an instantaneous exercise of will.  She lived within numbers and commands, traveled along the copper of wires and saw the world through the spyglass of optics.  She felt connected with the etherium crystals, in tune with the peculiar kind of magical radiation they emitted as a power-source.  She wondered if this was how one of her robots “thought,” only she was sure that she was thinking upon a more advanced level.  She’d been trying to bring about true, sapient AI for years only for nothing to pass the tests.   
  
She noticed a “tax roll” on one of the data-units.  It applied to various once-kingdoms that had been taken over by the Horde as well as “unaffiliated kingdoms.”  She caught Dryl and her name on it, slated for future-taxation.   
  
_Some kind of extortion-racket?  We won’t invade your kingdom if you pay us?_  
  
“Yeah, right,” she said to herself as she caught that tidbit and “ate” it, dissolving it into electrons that seemed to “nourish” her.  Just like that, her unpaid tax-record was gone.   
  
“They say that death and taxes are inevitable, but it looks like neither applies to me.  Well, not all the way.  Scratch that. I am dead – technically.  They still aren’t getting my estate-money.”   
  
As she raced through the wiring and found a way to bounce “herself” off a few wireless arrays, Entrapta sensed a source of immense magical energy.  She decided to explore it.  She stepped out of a wall into a deep red glow – a room that appeared bathed in radiant blood.  To her surprise, she saw her own hands as well as her own hair out in front of her – manifested, though translucent.   
  
“Why have I suddenly become a hologram?” she asked herself.  “Ooh, what’s this thing?”   
  
She raised herself upon her hair-tendrils just as she’d done when she’d had a proper body to take a look at the enormous crystal at the center of the room.   
  
“It’s a Runestone!” she exclaimed.  “A real Runestone!”   
  
She pressed spectral hand to it and suddenly, the hand was less-translucent, more whole.  It was no replacement for flesh and bone, nor the spectral clothing (she appeared to be wearing a ghostly set of what she had died in), but Entrapta felt like she was being rendered in a stronger form of light, almost a “hard-light.”  She tested this by using her hair to grasp and physically manipulate a control-panel.  The shackles upon what appeared to be some kind of restraining-bed in the room that was hooked up to it opened and closed.   
  
“Fascinating!”   
  
“What are you doing in here?  Get away from that!”   
  
Entrapta stiffened at the deep, dark voice that had caught her off-guard.  A tall, shadowed figure entered the room.   
  
“Step away from the Black Garnet, little Princess.”   
  
Entrapta backed away.  “Um… who might you be?” she asked in a cheerful voice.  “You can see me and hear me?”  
  
“Of course I can!” the robed and masked woman said.  “I would not be a sorceress worth her salt if I did not recognize a ghost when I saw one.  I am Shadow Weaver.  I am sure that you’ve heard my name before – in your nightmares. Most of Etheria has, after all.”   
  
“G-ghost? I don’t know what you mean.”  Entrapta replied.   
  
“You know exactly what I mean.”   
  
“Well, not entirely,” Entrapta admitted, leaning back on a chair she’d made with her hair and penting a pair of her fingers nervously.  “Can you tell me what I am?  I sort of died back there in one of your skiff-ports a few days ago?  A week?  Maybe it’s been a month…  It’s kind of hard to tell when one doesn’t need to eat or sleep anymore.  It’s also kind of hard to tell in the walls. I haven’t been able to figure out the logic – I don’t exactly have a processor anymore to generate my thoughts, yet, here I am!”   
  
“Your remains have been scraped up and sent to Bright Moon as an example,” Shadow Weaver said darkly.  “You are merely an afterimage.”   
  
“I guess so, but that doesn’t really explain- not scientifically -”  
  
“Something about your magic is binding you to the mortal realm.  My, you Etherian royals can be quite stubborn.”   
  
Shadow Weaver shot out her hand and attempted to “grab” Entrapta roughly.  Her withered fingers passed through Entrapta’s forearm.   
  
“I see now,” the sorceress spoke.  “You are siphoning energy – at present, from my Runestone.  What I feel, however, is that you are an electric-elemental.”   
  
“What does that mean? Ooh! Ooh! What does that mean? How does that work? Can you tell me?  Tell me everything...”   
  
“It is something very interesting.  Most things supernatural have an aversion to electricity, but you appear to have an affinity for it.  It also means that, though you can use ambient magic to manifest yourself, you are not tied to it, nor are you immune to its effects.”  
  
“Fascinating!  Say, do you want to become my research-assistant?  We can learn so much!”   
  
“Silly girl.”   
  
“Silly?  That’s a rather rude thing to say! I’m asking you to participate in science!”   
  
“I can bind you in my shadows.” Shadow Weaver hissed. “You can become MY assistant – no, my slave, to do MY bidding!  It would be a simple matter to send you into the nightmares of your friends and to make them watch you suffer.  Adora will pay for leaving me… and you are the perfect pawn for that. Would you like to feel yourself burned over and over again?”  
  
“No… I don’t think that would be very pleasant.  I think I am going to go now.”   
  
“I could finish the job and tear your very soul apart!  There is no flesh and blood and no physical-response will to live that can stop me!”   
  
“That doesn’t sound like much fun, either!”   
  
Shadow Weaver curled a ball of black magic in the palm of her right hand.  She shot it out toward the spectral Entrapta, who made haste to dodge, nearly tripping over the non-physical manifestation of her own hair.  She jumped back into the wall, de-rezzed off of the Black Garnet’s magic-field and rode the electrical-system wires just in time to miss getting hit.   
  
“Don’t think that this is over, Princess!”  Shadow Weaver shouted after her.  “I will find you and I will bind you!”  
  
For the first time since she’d died, Entrapta felt mortal fear again. 


	3. Live Wire

**E.N.T.R.A.P.T.A.**

**Chapter 3:  Live Wire**  
  
  
The wind howled over the lonely landscape as Bow crested a hill of garbage.  He shivered.  Perhaps he had too much exposed skin.  He remembered the Fright Zone being warmer the last time he was in it, but the shadows today definitely had a cooling effect. The sky seemed just a little darker today.  He looked up, wondering if it was going to rain.  He hoped that it wouldn’t be acid-rain.    
  
He’d made it to the edges of the vast scrap-yard.  This is where Adora had said there were many weak spots in the Horde’s defenses.  There were garbage-ports that were loosely guarded or left unguarded completely because it was where trash was transported out.  There were also many dangers – unpleasant wildlife that made the darker parts of the ports and bog-pits their home, old land-mines and various toxic areas.  There were light-beacons and guard-stations in nearer the fortress-proper and various barracks and bunkers, but much of the danger on the outskirts was from “the wasteland.”    
  
Bow planned to hide and spy as much as he could before taking any risks.  He remembered the way from his prison-cell to the skiff-yard.  He wondered if he could find another way in because the way that was stuck in his memory was through the flame-purge ports.  He winced hard thinking about them.  Images replayed themselves in his mind:  Adora heading out through one and slamming the controls of a doorway – the others beckoning him to stop reaching for her and to get out of the room before another doorway sealed with a jet of furnace-heat.  The robot-tank getting stuck.  Entrapta running back for her pet.  The flames, the too-smooth, too-quick door-sealing.  She’d looked back – the last time he’d seen life in her eyes – a confused look with just a tinge of fear.    
  
He sighed, reaching into his pocket.  He let his fingers and palm roll over the familiar cloth-wrapped object.  “If you hadn’t had to rescue us… If I’d been more careful… Maybe if we’d… been quicker? Saw you running back and tackled you straight to the ground?”    
  
He pulled the braid out, unwrapped it carefully and looked at it.  “I hate to say you died doing something stupid, but… in any case, you will be avenged.”  He gripped the braid.  “The Horde will pay!  And Glimmer, we’re going to cure her.  I’m not going to let her down.”    
  
Bow sighed again.  It really was disappointing talking to himself.  He missed the Best Friends Squad.  Glimmer was sick, Adora was missing in action, and here he was fixing to do something that might as well be suicide as a last ditch.  At least he wasn’t a royal.  Queen Angella wouldn’t give up herself for him if he got caught.  Glimmer might, but if either of them tried, he’d put a stop to it – somehow.  He remembered that it was Glimmer that was the bargaining-chip for her mother.  He had just been bait for the other Princesses – a “cherry on top,” as it were. 

 

Entrapta’s braid suddenly started twitching.    
  
“Gah-ah-ah!” Bow cried, dropping it in the dust.    
  
A moment later, he realized what he’d done.  He crouched down and observed it cautiously.  The purple length of hair writhed on the ground like a snake.    
  
“Wait? What?” he asked himself.    
  
The thing flopped like a live wire.  The end of it raised up and pointed in a northerly direction like a finger. 

 

“I am highly puzzled and disturbed by this,” Bow observed.  The braid found his wrist and curled around it.  It snaked around his hand until it had curled over his left index finger and formed a second, braided figure over it, which pointed.    
  
Bow resisted the urge to slap the alien appendage off himself.  He’d been meant to study it, right?  Also, this had belonged to Entrapta.  It was the only part of her that was left.  The archer had no idea why the hair, long lifeless, was suddenly animated.  He decided that he might as well follow its insistence to some sort of conclusion.    
  
“Alright, Twitchy,” he said, holding it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, standing up.  “I’ll…um…follow your lead.  Maybe this will solve the mystery of just what you are, hmm?  I can write up a paper and have it published in Dryl and… and she can rest.”   
  
Bow rounded a hill of what looked to be the remnants of cafeteria waste until he found himself in a valley of metal scrap, broken monitors and parts of old circuit-boards.  He picked his way through this ruined techno-jungle and started feeling the hairs on his forearms prick up.  There was an odd taste in his mouth.  He felt a sense similar to whenever he was up in the Moonstone Chamber visiting (or bothering) Glimmer as she recharged her magical energy.  There was definitely a magic-field here.  His sight caught a glimpse of a pile of rusted-out barrels leaking a glowing blue substance.  It was probably waste from refined etherium.  From remains that the Etherian Maker’s Community was able to gather from busted Horde tanks, they did something different with the mineral than any Etherian community that used it as a power-source.  The Horde’s power-nodes were distinctly different from, for example, Entrapta’s robot-designs, which used etherium crystals in their raw form, or slightly cut and distinctly etched.    
  
He saw something sparking.  It looked like a small blow-torch was hovering just a few inches off the ground with bits and pieces of a broken Horde mini-tank sentry moving around as if being stirred up by a small whirlwind.  Bow approached this curious sight closer.  The hair in his hand had gone limp again and he pocketed it.  He saw the outline of something – two large, rounded shapes attached to a humanoid form.    
  
“By the First Ones…” he mouthed.  He shook his head.  It couldn’t be.    
  
He had to be dreaming, or affected by toxic vapors.    
  
This couldn’t be real.  The kill had been confirmed.  A big metal box had found its way to Bright Moon’s throne room via a caravan that had picked it up from another caravan through a chain of orders and trades. He’d been in the room when Angella had it opened and the hologram from Hordak had played… and he’d tried to tackle Glimmer to the ground so she wouldn’t see, but she’d wrestled out of his grip even without teleporting…   
  
Dead red eyes staring blindly, blisters and char below that, increasing damage down the length of the body…   
  
Bow bit his lip and made it bleed.  He shook his head furiously.  “No, no, no, no, no!” he yelped.    
  
“Bow?”    
  
The delusion had to use a familiar voice to mock him.  Of course it did.    
  
“Bow, what are you doing here?  It’s pretty dangerous, you know.”    
  
“I know,” he said helplessly.  He decided that if this was his mind playing tricks on him, that he might as well go with it.  Maybe it would ease his mind and relieve some of his guilt to talk to the dream.  He’d been to Plumeria recently for a brief visit to see if Perfuma or any of her people had any herbal remedies that could help Glimmer with her pain and learned that Perfuma had gotten quite a bit of solace from talking to a topiary she’d made in Entrapta’s image.      
  
It was worth a shot.    
  
“Entrapta?”    
  
“Yes?”  The image turned its head.  She looked like a hologram – almost like one of the maps on the Bright Moon war-room table when they were brought up.  Lines of light flickered through her form like a bad television monitor signal.     
  
“You’re crying.  Just a little.  Are you upset about something?”    
  
“Um… sort of.  Kind of.  I’m kind of happy, too, I guess. It’s really hard to explain.”   
  
“I’m trying to fix up Emily.  Took me a long time to find her.  They just threw her out down here.  She’s not an easy fix – if I even can do it, but the Horde is awfully wasteful. Just look at this place!  It’s all trash to them.  I could only wish for such a vast scrap-yard in Dryl.  Such a playground!”    
  
Bow’s eyes scanned the ground.    
  
“Oh, what are you looking for?  Do you want to help me?”    
  
Bow got down on his hands and his knees and pawed around.    
  
“Hey! Those are my legs! And that’s my hair and… oh, don’t touch THAT! What ARE you doing, Bow?”   
  
“Looking for the holo-chip,” he grunted.  “This is some kind of cruel mockery.”    
  
“What do you mean?”   
  
Bow suddenly pounded the ground before her with both fists.  “YOU’RE DEAD!” he shouted.  “Was this going to be shipped to Bright Moon, too?  To taunt us?”    
  
“Bow, are you okay?”    
  
“No, I’m not!  I won’t be until I find this holo-disc, destroy it, collect some black magic off the Black Garnet, go back, heal Glimmer and find Adora – wherever she is!”    
  
Entrapta turned around, making a hair-chair for herself and going back to her tinkering, frustrated that she could only pick up so much of Emily’s scrap so far.  “Well, the offer’s open. You can help on Emily if you want.”    
  
Bow sighed and sat cross-legged on the ground.  He could not find any device that he recognized as being able to spit out a hologram.  He briefly wondered if Shadow Weaver was around, manipulating his mind in some way like she’d done to Adora.    
  
“You’re dead, Entrapta,” he repeated.  “Hordak sent your remains to Bright Moon. I…I…s-s-s-saw…you.  Glimmer, too…and Queen Angella.  It was awful… it must have hurt so much.   No one else saw you…after…the… port. The Princess Alliance broke up…everybody went back to their kingdoms.  Mermista, Perfuma and Sea Hawk…they thought what happened to you happened because we were together.  We all just felt so guilty, Entrapta.  Adora didn’t see, either. She was off trying to find a cure for Glimmer.  Glimmer’s been hurt – bad.  She can’t teleport anymore and there’s residual magic from the Black Garnet eating away at her powers.  I’m worried that it might start eating away at _her_ , too.  She might fade away forever and I can’t let that happen.  That’s why I’m here.”    
  
Entrapta paused and looked at him quizzically as he continued.    
  
“You…You were sent to Dryl.  They…finished the cremation and interred you at the royalty-memorial.  I think some of the ashes were saved to be pounded into metalworking?  As a kind of building of honor-robots thing?  I think your prime minister and a high court is running things now.  The cook-staff is still in charge of your castle.  There’s a ‘nerd gauntlet’ going on… an inventors’ contest for the sovereign-position.”   
  
“Oh, that thing.  Well, I wish luck to whoever wins!  I hope my ‘bots like them. I hope they like tiny food, too…I’m pretty sure that’s all my staff knows how to make.”    
  
Bow grit his teeth in a bitter expression, furrowing his brow.  “Entrapta, why did you go back?  Emily could have been fixed.  We can’t fix you.  We can’t bring you back.  For someone so smart, that was so… stupid!”    
  
“I don’t leave friends behind, Bow.”    
  
Bow gnawed his lower lip.  “You shouldn’t have gone back.  We lost you.  You’re gone… gone… and here I am, sitting in the dirt talking to a hallucination from my own fevered mind.”    
  
“Who said I was a hallucination?  I’m real.”    
  
Bow looked up.    
  
“You can’t be.  I didn’t think you’d be the type to believe in ghosts.”    
  
“Well, I can’t not-believe in them when I am one, can I?  Actually… I don’t know what I am.  I seem to be some kind of residual energy that can siphon off of magic power and electrical fields.  I’ve been jumping through the wiring of the Fright Zone… data-mining the computers, turning all of the water in the hydration-machines fizzy, making the food in the food-o-mats bite-size…doing tax-evasion - the usual…  Shadow Weaver called me an ‘electric elemental,’ I think.  Then I had to dodge her magic.  She wants to enslave me, like a bond-demon or something.” 

 

“We should get you out of the Fright Zone right away, then!”    
  
“I’m not sure I can leave.  There’s a lot of ‘residue’ here that is letting me keep myself together.  I’ve given thought that if I can get a ‘bot built, I can go back home, but without something techno-magical to inhabit, I might de-resonate and lose ‘myself’ – whatever I am right now.”    
  
Bow pulled the hair out of his pocket again, as it was squirming.    
  
“Ooh!” Entrapta exclaimed, watching in wonder.  She clapped her hands together.  “Is that the sample I gave you for study?”    
  
“Uh-huh.  I’m sorry that I kind of forgot about it until recently.  I carried it for luck.”    
  
“Hold it up.  I need to test a hypothesis.”    
  
Bow held the lock limp.    
  
“Let’s see now…it came from…ooh! This section of hair…”  She moved a spectral pony-tail and the physical hair moved in-kind.  She moved again, a more complex maneuver and the hair curled around.    
  
“Ha!” she said, “We have just received confirmation that my hair is…er…was… telekinetic in nature!  This is a breakthrough!  Thank you, Bow!”   
  
Bow softly smiled.  “Anything to help.”  He gently pocked the hair.  “So… you said that you’ve been able to possess electronics?”    


“Yeah.  I’ve seen loads of Fright Zone intel.  Did you know that Hordak uses a raspberry-scented body-wash in the shower?  I wouldn’t have guessed that…”   
  
“Focus, Entrapta.”    
  
“Oh, right.  You want to help get me out of here.”    
  
“I wonder if you could hang out in my tracker-pad.  You don’t think you’ll destroy it or anything, do you?”    
  
“Well, I haven’t destroyed any of the Horde’s wiring, if that’s what you mean.  Even the water-machines went back to normal after I’d stopped hanging out in them, which was most disappointing.  I think some of the Horde-cadets liked the soda.”    
  
“If you try, maybe I can carry you around in my tracker-pad…at least until we find a better solution.  Assuming my brain’s not fried from the sun and you are really you… it’ll be so good to have you back! Even… even like this.”    
  
Bow held out the pad and the specter of Entrapta “held” it gently within her two hands.  “Here goes nothing,” she said as she leaned in toward it and her form appeared to be sucked through one of the peripheral ports.    
  
Bow held it, shaking.  “Entrapta?  Entrapta, are you in there? Do you read?”    
  
Lines of yellow-white electric light took over the screen, forming themselves into the familiar face and twin-tails of a friend.  The etch-line Entrapta looked at him, smiling.  “Wow, I can think of some upgrades for this thing already if you don’t mind me doing a little tinkering!”    
  
“Entrapta, please, just hold yourself together.  Are you in there?  In-there-in-there?  Are you alright?  How do you feel?”    
  
“I feel better than I’ve been in a long time!”    
  
“Good! Good!  How’s the processor running for you?”    
  
“I can think.”    
  
“This is sooo awesome!”    
  
“I know, right?  If we’re going to vamoose, can you grab Emily’s motherboard over there?  I don’t think you can carry all her parts, but I don’t want to leave her.  Maybe you and I can piece something together for her as long as we have her brain.”    
  
“This?”  Bow said, picking up an etched object and holding it up to the tracker-pad’s screen.     
  
“Yeah, that’s it.  Keep it safe.”    
  
“I… I still need to find a way to cure Glimmer.  I think her illness has to do with the Runestones.”    
  
“I have a theory about those.”    
  
Bow froze.  “I don’t know whether to continue on with my mission or… to try to get you somewhere safe.”   
  
“Shadow Weaver knows I’m a ghost, in that case. She threatened to tear apart my soul.”    
  
“But, you’ve gotten into their systems, right?  Do you have any data on the Black Garnet you can give us?”    
  
“Plenty!  I downloaded a few files and even got close to the thing before she caught me!”   
  
Bow sighed and stared into the tracker-pad.  “This has all gotten weird.”    
  
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Listen, if I get a chance to look at Glimmer, maybe I can assess what’s wrong?  It might be like that virus that infected my robots…I’ll have to see.”    
  
“I promise not to take you apart,” Bow said with a soft grin.    
  
“Let me see…” the energy-etch Entrapta on the screen said, putting a finger to her chin.  “I’m gonna need a designation, aren’t I?  Hmmmm.  How about ‘Encased Neural Transformative Random-Access Paranormal Tracker-pad Assistant?”    
  
“E.N.T.R.A.P.T.A?” Bow asked, mouthing the acronym.     
  
“I need to keep my name somehow.”    
  
Bow laughed gently.  “Pretty brilliant.  Come on. Let’s get out of this dump.” 


End file.
